For Camp NaNoWriMo, my word count was only 15,000, so I finished early. Winning didn’t feel as revolutionary as it normally does because my story/series is nowhere near finished. Those 15,000 words got me a little closer to my goal of completing the backstory, and a lot of the questions I have had for years are finally answered. The answers are now “canon” and will not be changed unless I have a very good reason for doing so. (That’s one of the reasons I would rather write fiction than fanfiction… I get to invent my own canon. :) )
I’ll probably continue working on the backstory all the way through June, and depending on how far I get, 
I will likely set the same word count goal for Camp NaNo July. The goal of 500 words per day worked really well for me; it’s enough to be at least somewhat substantial, but at the same time, it wasn’t overwhelming. Plus, if I fell behind, it was easier to catch up. Those 500 words were just enough to keep the story alive in my head as everything else in real life clamored for attention.
The point of this post? Pick some kind of minimum word count to keep the story going. The more days you write nothing, the more likely you will be to put the story down and never pick it back up again.
